It's still early in 2005 and service oriented architecture (SOA) is already being positioned to be one of the most talked about terms of the year.
Industry pundits have pondered numerous questions and made many predictions. Will 2005 be the year for SOA? Will this be the year customers implement an SOA? Will SOA be most talked about term of the year? Will it become the most over-hyped term?
I'd like to add one more to the list. Do customers even want an SOA?
Nearly all conversations about SOAs focus on flexibility, breaking down applications into services, modular, reuse, increased availability and management of services. What does all this really mean? These conversations are often discussed in a vacuum void of any real business problem or opportunity that needs to be addressed. This creates risk that SOAs may evolve into the use of technology for technology's sake. They slice, they dice, they do anything you need them to do faster, cheaper and more efficient than anything else ever used. The industry is just starting to recover from the downfall created the last time this happened.
